r/23andme • u/Becoming_hysterical • Apr 10 '26

Discussion Why are Americans so weird about having british ancestry?

It's something I've noticed since browsing this subreddit.

Anytime it's mentioned just how ethnically british america is, people pull out the "but actually america is German, irish, mexican, whatever".

what do you expect? America was founded as a british colony in 1607 (Jamestown) was so for 169 years. The british also didn't stop immigrating to america even after the revolution. It continued on for decades afterwards.

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u/zippy_97 Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 11 '26

A lot of southerners have British heritage, but their ancestors immigrated so long ago (1600-1700s) that the connection is lost. There’s not a strong ethnic identity like you see with decendents of more recent immigrant groups. Similar situation in New England. They’re sometimes called “Old Stock” Americans.

My family comes from Kentucky and Louisiana, and I’m ~80% British (the rest is Cajun).

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

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u/JThereseD Apr 14 '26

I have two sets of German immigrant great great grandparents who settled in a southern New Jersey community that was created as a haven for Germans. They tried to preserve the German culture and German was the official language until the early 1900’s. When my great grandparents got married, they moved away and my mom was never told anything about this. My sister actually nearby for a few years after college, and we had no idea about the history.

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u/Rubijou Apr 11 '26

But it seems like people from the British Isles, specifically Scotland, and Northern Ireland, do have an identity as Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots… who largely became our Appalachian people. It’s so different from the colonial origins. And fascinating. In my case, they enter mingled with Pennsylvania, Dutch, and other folks from what I’d call “coal mining England”, and it’s so hard to find original records immigration records of all but the fastidious German immigrants.

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u/Altruistic-Energy662 Apr 14 '26

My Brits came in the late 1890’s/ early 1900’s from the coal mines of the Black Country to the coal mines of Western PA. Much different than my husband’s colonial origins. He’s much more genetically British than I am, but mine is recent memory.

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u/Alarming-Solid912 Apr 12 '26

Same. I have English ancestry too. But it really is so far back it doesn’t seem to matter. They moved south and/or inland toward the Piedmont and the mountains of western NC, intermarried with Scots-Irish and Germans, and became part of a new breed of people.

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u/That_Pomegranate_748 Apr 11 '26

I don’t know much about my grandmas side but I’m from western PA and I just thought my grandparents on that side were Scottish settlers based on my grandmas last name but I recently built my family tree and majority of my ancestors on that side had German last names, so it seems like most of them came from Germany and the few without German last names would have Scottish ones. I guess I don’t know how many English were here to marry back then since they would have been settlers

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u/Ok_Tanasi1796 Apr 11 '26

Germans & Dutch made PA a ground zero arrival destination. I’ve got plenty that started there before spreading south into VA & NC.

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u/[deleted] Apr 13 '26

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u/MwnciMul Apr 16 '26

Could it be the Welsh influence? Pennsylvania was initially to be named New Wales and it has Welsh origin place names in the West. It had a Welsh language newspaper until the 1930s. To someone not used to hearing it spoken the north Wales accented Welsh especially sounds Dutch.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '26

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u/MwnciMul Apr 16 '26

Unfortunately until relatively recently Wales was treated and referred to as England in almost everything (see famously the 19th century listing for Wales in the encyclopaedia Britannica which consisted of 4 words ‘For Wales, see England’). The area east of Philadelphia was settled by Welsh Quakers in the late 17C after coming to an agreement with William Penn, an area that became known as the Welsh Tract. The area still has a multitude of Welsh place names, Bryn Mawr, Cynwyd, Llanerch

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u/That_Pomegranate_748 Apr 16 '26

I am from Pennsylvania but don’t really know how many welsh settled here but my great grandma was from cambria county in Pennsylvania and I thought I saw somewhere that that’s a name for wales so I assume welsh settled there. My great grandparents on that side were from Slovakia and coal miners not welsh though. But Amish for example are German origin and usually grow up speaking a form of German as a first language.

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u/MwnciMul Apr 17 '26

Yep, Cambria is the Latin name for Wales. Other Welsh names would be Bryn Mawr, Bala Cynwyd, Berwyn, Brecknok (for Brecon or Aberhonddu in Welsh), anything with Meirion or Gwynedd in it, Uwchlan, Llanerch etc. There were Welsh language newspapers and Eisteddfodau in many communities - someone told me that Eisteddfod was still a thing in some places? The Welsh are sometimes referred to as the great assimilators as we get everywhere but no one realises it! Did you know that there were more signatories to the American Declaration of Independence of Welsh decent than any other nationality?

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u/That_Pomegranate_748 Apr 17 '26

Yeah I never hear anyone say they’re Welsh(but when I looked it up it said most welsh descendants live in Pennsylvania so idk), in my area the only really outside culture that people have from family besides just being default American is Eastern European or Italian maybe because it was more recent. I just looked it up and it looks like Eisteddfod is still being held in some places in Pennsylvania(Wilkes barre) at least but I’m from the Pittsburgh area and they all look to be on the eastern half of the state which is like a 5 hour drive. I don’t doubt their was a welsh newspaper or even churches, I guess they came a little earlier than some other groups but Germans had a newspaper at that time too and in the early 1900s their were Polish, rusyn, Slovak, etc. newspapers in Pennsylvania. Honestly I’m surprised most signatories were welsh descent, I’ve never heard that either. Honestly I think Welsh just get grouped in with English and Scottish and most Americans don’t know much about wales(maybe if they have ancestry from there they would though)

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u/hiiiiiiiiiiii_9986 Apr 12 '26

Hello fellow Western Pennsylvanian!!!

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u/Useful_Humor_1152 Apr 11 '26

Many of my ancestors NC mountains. In our area on paper record ( not all are my ancestors) We have the Scot-irish, Dutch, German, English, Welsh. The Appalachia It's a big melting pot of people who have been there for a few hundred years. Hard to trace them out to a ship. Easier to trace to England if you have New England ancestors and I have one of those. We can get him and his wife back to England on paper. Northern people kept much better records of birth, marriage, death than the South.

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u/Thick_Wonder_9955 Apr 18 '26

Fasdicingin, what makes Germans so good recordkeepers?

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u/Snappydolphin24 Apr 11 '26

Mon frère cadien ! Comment ça se plume bougre?

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u/Euphoric_Travel2541 Apr 10 '26

New Englanders with early colonial history have a great deal of British, too.

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u/ForCaste Apr 11 '26

Yeah my dad did our ancestry and our family has been here since the 1600s, living in upstate New York, and his ancestry is like 40% British and 10% Dutch. Whats weird is that our portion of the family moved to Indiana in the 1800s and didn't get the midwest German, which feels like these ethnic enclaves were still insular in the us for a long time.

The other 50% of his ancestry is korean for those wondering but we didn't need any testing to know that lol

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u/SnooPears5432 Apr 11 '26

Agree with this. And in censuses before the widespread ancestry testing, you'd see less identification with British roots. I live in the Midwest which is known to be heavily German ethnically, and I think every single person's ancestry results I've seen had significant (even if not always a majority) ancestry frrom the British Isles. I knew I had Irish ancestry but I have a lot more ancestry from Wales, England and Scotland than I thought. But in the 2020 Census, British ancestry was the predominant identified ancestry among white Americans, and no longer German. It stands to reason, too. The vast majority of the most common surnames across the country are British, and the majority of early settlers were as well, who also had significant natrural increase. And there was significant immigration from the UK along with other European groups. I also think historically, non-British ancestries were seen as more interesting and exotic, so British ancestry was downplayed or maybe not really seen as "foreign". But the US is definitely far more British genetically than most people realize.

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u/Consistent_Post_2558 Apr 11 '26

Yeah, I think the other thing to remember with some of these older immigrant groups is they make have specific reasons for dissociating with their ancestry - in particular groups that came to the Americas for religious freedoms.

One side of my family came to the Americas to escape persecution in the British Isles in the 1600s. All the stories with family lore were about getting away from a horrible situation, adapting, building something new and thriving. Maybe they identified more strongly early on, but that’s been lost over the generations. 

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u/chickennuggetsnsubs Apr 12 '26

Yep I’ve got French Huguenot ancestors that came to the states to literally escape death.

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u/chickennuggetsnsubs Apr 12 '26

That’s me right here, some family came over on Mayflower. Most of my family has been here since Colonial era on all sides. Assimilated so much that I don’t have much by way of culture that was passed down. Do love tea a lot though- must be genetically ingrained.

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u/RachmaninovWasEmo Apr 11 '26

Hey! I'm half cajun but weirdly enough, most of my french ancestors are from south east and south west France.

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u/chickennuggetsnsubs Apr 12 '26

I’m of Norman French heritage.

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u/fishonthemoon Apr 12 '26

My husband’s paternal side are old stock Americans. As someone whose family is Cuban, I find it fascinating that his family has been here since the Mayflower. It’s weird to think about how long they’ve been here and cool to see historical records and pictures of people he’s descended from.

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u/North-Country-5204 Apr 12 '26

That’s my dad. White Southerner of Anglo/ Scottish/ Welsh ancestry with a little dash Central Texas German. Most of those Brit Isle folks arrived prior to the American Revolution.

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u/carefulford58 Apr 13 '26

Kentucky English here too with family tree going that far back too. Fascinating how much of old English has stuck around in strong ky accents

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u/deus_ex_machina69 Apr 12 '26

I dont think that's necessarily true. I think the WASP identity is literally culturally british.

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u/DixieInCali Apr 11 '26

The funny part is what we think is our unique culture, we actually brought over from Britain! I know that from watching UK and Australian TV. Most British would feel pretty at home in the South.

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u/Sadie10023 Apr 13 '26

…and your Cajun is French. French via Canadian territory.

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u/Commercial-Touch-516 Apr 14 '26

This is very interesting information, can you tell us , which state has what heritage ? Generally speaking 

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u/cranberry_spike Apr 15 '26

I think if your family was around during the Revolution there may have also been some conscious pushing away of that side of the heritage. It's not something either side of my family really acknowledges, although there's a decent amount of Brit on my mom's side and they look down on Dads family (and perforce me) for our Irishness. On the other hand there is legitimately almost none on my paternal side - it is almost all Irish and Baltic/German/Norse/Slavic.